Palm Announces WebOS Upgrades for Palm Pre, Pixi

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Earlier this week Palm announced version 1.3.5 of WebOS, the operating system on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi smartphones. The update doesn't include any new applications or utilities, but it does make some significant changes to the operating system that users have been clamoring for, including the ability to use all of the storage capacity of the phone for app downloads, improved battery life, and changes to the Palm App Catalog that make it easier for users to download new apps and updates.

Some of the most significant changes in WebOS 1.3.5 are in the Palm App Catalog. The general user experience has been updated, users can download apps from the App Catalog in the background even if they leave the download screen, users can manually pause or cancel downloads easily, and quickly access updates for all of their installed applications on one screen.

Additionally, the upgrade gives users the ability to perform a full erase of their device with a button combination, turns off certain services in areas of poor coverage to boost battery life, and restores applications that user has installed when they log in to their Palm profile so they don't have to reinstall all of their apps from scratch.

The new version of WebOS also comes with some minor updates and bug fixes to the default installed applications like the built-in Web browser and e-mail client, like the ability to edit forwarded text and more easily distinguish among multiple e-mail accounts from the same provider in the e-mail client and support for animated gifs in the browser.

Sprint has pushed the WebOS 1.3.5 update, and it's available to Palm Pre and Pixi owners now. Users will be automatically alerted that an update is ready for them, or they can open the Updates app to manually check in, download, and install the update.